Human Cities Festival

This communication is based on a 4-year study done in the heart of public space in Brussels. By observing users in the field, we tried to better understand the way they interact with urban space. The final objective of our study is to propose a method to those who shape the territory (architects, urban planners, decision takers, designers, ...) to enable them not only to integrate usages, but to gain inspiration from those usages in their work. The presentation will consider one of the central tools of this method: a typology geared to the spatial aspect of usages, that we refer to as spatial interaction figures. Stage, Shelter, Bath, Magnet, Passage etc., these are all concepts that can be used as the groundwork for describing the various ways that space and users interact with each other during a given type of usage. During these contacts, the shapes, textures and dimensions of the space are alternately a tool or a constraint for the user. On the basis of this typology, we endeavour to describe this capacitating or decapacitating potential of the space, specifically for each interaction figure. This kind of typology gives those producing public space a better understanding of the impact of layout and furnishings on urban usages, thus enabling them to plan better.

Sabine Guisse is an architect who graduated from La Cambre in 2005. Since January 2006, she has been working as a researcher at the Centre de Recherches Architecturales de la Cambre (CRAC), as part of the Prospective Research for Brussels programme supported by the Brussels region. Her efforts focus on the use of public space and its recognition as a resource for design. This research project was one oh the main theoretical contributions to the European project “Human Cities”. Today, Sabine Guisse is developing the themes of this conference. By maintaining the question of usage as a backdrop, the theme announced continues to refer to the original concerns, while expanding as broadly as possible to include questions on ways of studying, producing and acknowledging public spaces when the human dimension of the city is at stake.